HUMANS 101
If You Want to Enjoy Your Job, Try Failing
When I burned out at work, I tried doing things I was bad at. It worked.
Some time in 2019, I became sick of my own writing. This was an accomplishment, considering how much I normally love the sound of my own voice. I had been writing professionally for a decade; I had carved out a beat on “women’s issues”; I had made a name for myself, which, if not universally beloved, was not universally unknown.
You knew what to expect, clicking the link to a Doyle piece, and that was the problem: I had been writing the same thing, over and over, for years. Rape culture? Bad. Abortion? Good! I made the same points, in the same order, at the same length, so often that my editors didn’t just have to tell me I’d pitched them an idea already — they sometimes had to remind me that they’d published it.
I had chosen to be a writer because I genuinely loved the act of putting words on paper. Even when it was hard, I would rather have a hard time writing than an easy time doing anything else. I had acquired competence, and I had acquired professionalism, but in the process, I had drained the joy from my work. If I ever wanted to write something I was proud of, I had to start from the beginning. I had to fail.
